Just finished the Averoigne stories by Clark Ashton Smith and while more Gothic one thing that really stuck in my mind is how much of a role temptation plays in those stories, as in a lot of traditional fairy tales ("you can enter any room in this house expect this one, OK, I'm going now, here's the key to that room, remember not to open it!").

Temptation would really be an angle I'd want to push good and hard in this sort of game since it's so much in keeping with the kind of stories we've been talking about and some of my favorite gaming moments have been when horrible things happen and the players hang their heads and realize that it's all their fault because of the horrible mistakes they have made.

The line that has to be tread is temptation can't be an out of the blue gotcha ("the beautiful woman you saved and who has been travelling with you is now going to kill you in your sleep without warning, sucks to be you!") but it has to be tempting enough to get the players to fall for it without bludgeoning them into with game mechanics.

Some ideas:
-Tempting the PCs with wealth is easy. Could see them falling for the old "any room except that" temptation. But not really a lot of pathos there.
-The temptation of power is something that'd work better if you play it over the long haul in which a sorcerous NPC slowly asks more and more disturbing favors in exchange for power.
-But fairy tales and similar stories are full of the temptations of beauty and the senses in general and that's really hard to make work in an RPG. In the Averoigne stories there are constant attempts at seduction which generally sets of alarm bells in player's heads as they don't really benefit at all from trysts in a game and players have been screwed over by hidden succubuses for decades and have become wary. Not sure how to approach this. Maybe really push the "marriage = power" angle you get a lot in fairy tales ("marry the princess and the king gives you half his kingdom"), but wish something more subtle would work as tragic romance is such a strong theme in the Arthuriana I've been looking around as well as the more gruesome stuff in Smith's writing (ye gods man, enough with the necrophilia!).

Quote from: Simlasa;787225I don't know its significance in the original stories but in Boorman's movie it seems to have vast restorative powers... instant Spring and shiny armor on everyone. It restored the land.

I'd want Artifacts to have a large presence... like, just being around it could inspire people or send them into despair without even knowing it's there.

Was just looking through the Wikipedia article on the Holy Grail and it's amazing how diverse the legends about it are. One take on the Grail that caught my eye was a Moorecock in which it was posited that the Grail had the ability to reconcile the Devil with God which piqued my interest. Although the novel apparently didn't go in the direction in the end that seems like it'd make an interesting basis for a campaign set in the last days of King Arthur's reign as the realm hurtles towards the Battle of Camlann as a sort of mini-Armageddon while angels and devils pull strings in the background. The best hope for the realm is to heal the division with the Grail and redeem Mordred (and the devil?). The only question would be how to do it without making it a Monty Python quotation marathon.

Agreed completely on artifacts. They really should be placed on the map and have legends seeded about them before the game starts so that you can map out the effects that their very presence causes.

For minor magic items, what I'm leaning towards is having a lot of them a spell that's cast on an item and as long as that item is active the magic-user who cast the spell on the item can't recover that spell slot. That gives a reason for lots of the weirdly restrictive terms that are often attached to magical aid and provides mechanics for making those kind of items while giving a good reason for NPCs to use it to help NPCs but not for PC wizards to use it so often that you get the magic item Christmas tree effect.

Quote from: Lynn;786988That is a major thesis of H P Lovecraft in Supernatural Horror in Literature for weird fiction.

Think there's a bit of a difference here. There's the comfortable world that we know being under attack being horrors and the horror of learning that the comfortable world we live in is itself a horror. Lovecraft is very much the later, while AFAIK you generally get more of the first one in fairy tales and the like which generally map better onto Romanticism and conservatism.

Quote from: Wodge;786983Useful links to some fairytale motifs and tropes: http://oaks.nvg.org/pega4.html and http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html

Hope these prove helpful.

Many thanks. More Appendix N fodder.

Quote from: David Johansen;786979I've tried very hard to build some magical logic into my magic rules.  However at the same time I always want the magic system to treat similar results similarly, for instance summoning creatures tends to be game mechanic oriented.

In theory there should be things that are easier to summon that are powerful and things that are hard to summon but weak.  Magic's like that.  I do tend towards demons being particularly easy to call up because they want to come.

Read through the magic section. I like the focus on magical paraphernalia but I think I prefer the specific magical effects to be very specific and quirky like the best D&D spells.

Thanks, Daztur I've re-written it about six times.  Magic is something I believe a fantasy game should get right. The original version is a little quirkier but doesn't quite work how I want it to.  The current one, while a bit dry, avoids the list of a million spells syndrome.  Mostly I wanted to focus on the process of magic.  What I really need to do is build the actual expanded spell lists for each realm of magic.  Though, honestly realms of magic should be written to match setting themes rather than the fairly generic ones I've used.  I think that would serve to make the magic a bit quirkier.

Quote from: David Johansen;787368Thanks, Daztur I've re-written it about six times.  Magic is something I believe a fantasy game should get right. The original version is a little quirkier but doesn't quite work how I want it to.  The current one, while a bit dry, avoids the list of a million spells syndrome.  Mostly I wanted to focus on the process of magic.  What I really need to do is build the actual expanded spell lists for each realm of magic.  Though, honestly realms of magic should be written to match setting themes rather than the fairly generic ones I've used.  I think that would serve to make the magic a bit quirkier.

Right. I kind of like the list of a million spells syndrome to be honest but you've basically provided more Lego blocks while I'm looking for more pre-painted minis.

The single best description of how I want magic to work mechanically is (old rpg.net forum post by "Random Nerd"):

"Okay, I can talk to spiders, fly for as long as I can hold an ice cube in my mouth, curse people to be unable to see dogs, and read the mind of anyone who's holding a fork. I want to get Joe Smith removed from his position on the Board of Directors of ACME Corp. within two weeks. Hmm..."

The best magic, for me at least, makes the players think "OK, how the hell am I going to use this in an actual adventure" and the wheels start turning...

But I very much get that that's not for everyone

D&D is actually one of the very best games for that aspect of magic.

I didn't want lego blocks as much as a structured set of common effects.  Hopefully when I build the spell lists with the creature quirks and such it will feel more magical.

For instance to turn into a wolf you can use an image of a wolf, a wolf hair, a wolf pelt, or the heart of a wolf but the difficulty of the spell is directly impacted by the quality of the association.  But beyond that I'd like it to be easier to turn into a wolf at the full moon.

What I don't want is discretely different rules for the effects of turning into a mouse an owl and a wolf.  Personally, a single set of effect rules are enough but the details of the cases in point should be where the unique effects fit in.  

For instance in one culture wolves are evil and in another they're noble and medieval bestiaries are full of different abilities ascribed to animals that might come from an otherwise generic Aspect of Species spell.

Ideally, the uniqueness of magic is in the subjects rather than the effects if that makes any sense.  It makes it possible to keep the rules to a structural minimum while allowing for a lot of diversity.

Quote from: David Johansen;787377For instance to turn into a wolf you can use an image of a wolf, a wolf hair, a wolf pelt, or the heart of a wolf but the difficulty of the spell is directly impacted by the quality of the association.  But beyond that I'd like it to be easier to turn into a wolf at the full moon.

What I don't want is discretely different rules for the effects of turning into a mouse an owl and a wolf.  Personally, a single set of effect rules are enough but the details of the cases in point should be where the unique effects fit in.  

I like the bit about the associated materials, that was one of the best bits of the Conan d20 game which has a very good magic system overall.

But I kind of do want discretely different rules for turning into a mouse, an owl and a wolf.

Have been reading Three Hearts and Three Lions and I'd be happy to have turning into a swan work just like the swanmay in the book while it's only possible to turn into a wolf during the night of a full moon, etc. etc. and differentiate them as much as possible. But that's just my personal taste, I'm sure a lot of people want a more uncluttered magic system but I really like long long long D&D spell lists as it gives you massive diversity of magic while only requiring the PCs to know a few rules.

It's a fair point.  As I said, one of the places D&D actually excels is magic that feels magical.  Arbitrary differences and limitations are certainly part of that.  The first version of my magic rules had seven different mind control spells.  This version it's different.  You could evoke and emotion, shape spirit, conjure a spirit to possess someone but those are instances of three different spell types.

It would be liberating to just write hundreds of disassociated spells.  Very eighties, just like my rules.  I always did think a second volume of specific spells would be a neat supplement.